To Finding Happiness
by HEY ME
Summary: I really suck at summaries. It's AU. Kurt and Blaine are kids. Also this was written for a competition so if you see Kara instead of Kurt, I'm sorry. I double-checked it.


To Finding Happiness

Snow was cold and pale. It was ruthless. It covered the flowers, the grass, the purple, the pink, and the red, it scared away the kittens, killed the trees. It brought the darkness with it, making everything icy, similar, dull. Hiding the good in the living. The cerement of the nature, a resemblance of crime instead of fairness. Everything was brutally equal: white, cold and wet.

It was a lot like tears actually, a heart-breaking sight for everyone, an action that's done in every phase of living.

A lot like death. Like a knife, cold and sharp and undeniable.

Ending.

Breath-takingly sudden, so sudden it's numbing.

To most children snow was fun. It was Santa, magic, a new begining, snowball fights. Most children liked snow.

To Kurt, the sweet little child who had to grow faster than he should have, snow was his mother's death.

-

"My mum's late. _Again_!" The eight year old boy resisted the urge to stomp his feet to the ground and scowled at the road instead. His mother was always late, she never listened to him when Kurt tried to talk about school, tried to tell her how the other kids hated him, tried to ask her if something was wrong with him. His mother always sat in front of a TV she didn't watch, staring at it blankly and only getting up to go to bed when his dad had all but dragged her out of the couch.

Lizzie, the only friend he had, grabbed the strap of her bag defensively and looked at the cars coming and going. "I asked my dad what those things your mum took were." She said, her breath making a temporal smoke on the cold January air. "He was eating one of them but the shape was different."

Kurt momentarily forgot his anger and perked up at the new information. "Well?"

The girl didn't turn to glance at him, which was sort of panicking, because it was always a bad sign when she came off this defensive. "He said they were called pills and that I shouldn't eat them because they were bad for my health."

"Why is my mum taking them if they're bad?" He asked, trying not to feel so bad about it. He tried to forget about his mum, _started to_ forget about his mum. Emily Richardson was once a beautiful woman, she smiled a lot and was always full of joy before last year. Then she changed. Maybe it wasn't so drastical and sudden. Maybe there were signs of her changing but Kurt never picked them up. So he decided to forget that side of his mum, because forgetting hurt less.

"I asked why he was giving me those when I had a cold." Lizzie still wasn't looking at him and it was getting unnerving. "He said I should only take them when I was sick."

"That doesn't make any sense. They are bad if you're good, and good if you're bad? Are they magical or something?"

"Of course you don't understand." Lizzie rolled her eyes and giggled, which should have been offensive but it wasn't. Because Kurt knew Lizzie, knew she always acted like she was better than everyone else but never felt like it. He knew everyone hated her, too and that was why she was the way she was. And although everyone would beg to differ, Lizzie was a good person. She would help someone if they were in need, she would never admit it, but she would help nonetheless.

"Wait." Kurt said as a thought struck her. "Why does mum take them like, _all the time_? She can't be sick that long."

Lizzie looked worried and opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by a noise of a car stopping in front of them. Kurt immediately recognized the car, recognized the driver, but it was definitely not his mother and he tried to ignore the hurt that came with anger.

He cast one last annoyed look at Lizzie, obviously saying 'See what I'm dealing with?' before running off to the car.

The doors were unlocked before he even reached the car and his dad pulled the window down. "You can sit on the front." He said, and had he sounded like he was crying?

Kurt jumped onto the seat and buckled his seatbelt quickly before turning to look at his father. He _was_ crying. His eyes were red rimmed and the tip of his nose was a little pink, too. "Dad?" He asked, his voice barely coming out as a whisper, his heart thumping dangerously in his chest. "What's wrong?"

His father sniffed and started the car again without saying a word and drove off to the opposite direction of their house.

This was bad. He could feel his blood turn cold in her veins, his eyes burn with carefully held back tears. His body knew before his consciousness. Something really bad had happened, and why was he feeling so empty suddenly? Like a piece of his heart was ripped off, the rest trying to repair itself so desperately it hurt?

He knew how to ignore it, though. Maybe he shouldn't have. Maybe he was too young to know that but he did. So he closed his eyes tight, gulped a lung of air and stared at the road. He thought about what they learned at school today, he thought about the games he knew, thought about the butterflies, and swimming. He thought about his only friend, how she laughed before realizing doing so and turning back to scowling again.

He thought about anything, everything. But never about his mother. Never about the look on his father's eyes. Like he was clinging to a cliff with his nails, barely holding himself from coming to pieces.

He didn't want to think about that. Didn't want to know what it meant.

That, until the car stopped in front of a hospital he knew so well so young, and the silent became too much to bear. Until he ran out of thoughts and his head was just a complicated mess. Random things swimming and grabbing and disappearing only to end on one thought. One simple question.

_What happened?_

-

Kurt _despised_ waiting and the rooms. The uncomfortable chairs, the boring painting, the fainting, crying people. He wanted to scream because it was either too loud or too silent. An annoying baby was screaming his lungs out at the corner of the room, a woman sobbing and another woman soothing her with a hand on her back. There was even a television in there and he seriously wanted to kill someone for coming up with that idea.

But despite all that sound, all that crying and running around, all those nerve attacks, it was too silent. It didn't help him hide from his thoughts. He couldn't run away, felt trapped with his father's arms around him. Because it felt more like he was grounding himself than comforting his son.

He looked at the clock.

Two more hours. The doctors said they would talk to them again in five hours.

Just two more hours and this hell is over.

-

You know, when you're _really_ waiting for something, you just keep looking at the clock like it's some kind of magical machine that will speed up the seconds. You just wait, and count, and watch the quiet ticking of it. Even though it sounds so very loud to you, like thunder ripping through the sky at night, making you jump. As if whatever you're waiting for is going to appear at the second the countdown is over.

But it doesn't, does it?

Sometimes it doesn't even come at all. Like when you're waiting for a loved one to get out of the hospital, but they never do.

Sometimes they're just gone forever.

Or they do, when they're being put on the back of a hearse, like they are nothing special, like nobody even cared.

Then you have to go to the funeral, and it feels like a dream, like you're an outsider, watching a movie.

_None of this is real._

But it is. And it _hurts_. It hits you like a freight train and when it does, when you finally face the truth, you can't _breathe_. You can't even _think_. Your whole world's just collapsed onto your head and the time slows down and everyone around you is crying and you just want them to _stop_. _Stop_ because it's not making it any easier. Why are you crying? Why does it matter?

_It's a dead body._

That's when you realize it really is not anything special. Not anymore. Because that person is gone and all you have is an unmoving, frozen body. It's just a shell of a memory that was once good. It's not any different than a photograph.

Then, _then_, all you can do is cry. Because fuck being strong and not caring, fuck dealing with pain. Life has just ripped someone off from your life and it might change _everything_. It shouldn't, because death is unmistakable, undeniable, but it does. It does change you and you can feel it.

At some point, even crying doesn't make sense but you can't stop.

Because this _can't be real_. _How does this feel so real_?

You want to scream, plead at the sky, pray to some non-existent power to make a miracle happen and bring them back. But, of course, nothing happens. Because this is real life and real life is cruel despite what is taught in fairy tales.

The body goes down the cold, dull earth, it's so odd the only thing you can do is stare. Even though a part of you wants to scream them not to, even though your lungs hurt from crying and your throat is sore, even though the physical pain is nothing compared to the one you're feeling in the very depths of your soul.

You can't tell them you want to keep the body, as insane as that may sound, you just can't.

Because you have to move on, you have to keep living, loving, hating, _losing_. But _how_?

How do you even move on from something like this?

-

Kurt couldn't stand the funeral. So he ran away.

Everyone in there was annoying. All of them were such hypocrites.

There were about 50 people in there and yes, maybe some of them were actually sad but most of them were just there to look like a decent person. Everyone was fake.

For example, there was Ms. Hiddleton, the old lady living across the street, pretending to cry her eyes out. But she never liked his mother, always criticized her, always fought with her. A man from his mother's work was holding a tissue to his nose but his cheeks were pulled up. There was this little boy looking confused like he was just there because he had to. A woman was sobbing way too loud to be real and Kara tried to not think of kicking her.

But the worst was his dad. He never talked. He never even looked at his way.

Burt Hummel only nodded politely to the people who gave him their condolences, shook the hands that were offered and did what he was supposed to do. There was no emotion on his face.

And whenever he looked at him, Kurt felt like maybe he lost not only one parent, but both of them.

He couldn't bear the thought. So he ran out.

-

"What are you doing?"

Kurt's eyes shot open at the unfamiliar voice. A boy, about 6 years old, he guessed, was standing right behind his head, on the snow where he was sprawled across, staring down at him curiously. The boy moved to stand next to him once he realized he was awake.

"My mom died, yesterday." He croaked, like it explained everything. And maybe it did.

The other kid's eyes grew wide, kind of sad. "I can't imagine my mum dead, that's horrible." He slowly folded his legs to sit down next to him and Kurt suddenly felt uncomfortable by the invasion of his personal space. The boy wasn't wearing anything thick enough to protect him from the cold. Just a plain suit and a thin, black coat over it. Kurt noticed he was that confused looking boy from the funeral. He certainly had the same hazel eyes and the dark, curly hair.

"Did you follow me?" Kurt asked, blue eyes norrowed into a thin line.

The boy sighed and looked down. "I'm sorry, you looked sad."

"I _am_ sad." He didn't know why he was acting like Lizzie all of a sudden. She just felt angry. At nothing and at everything.

Did that make sense?

"I'm sorry," the boy said again, and sounded genuinely upset, even if it wasn't his fault. Hazel eyes turned back up to him. "So what are you doing on the snow?"

Kurt looked up at the sky and moved his arms and legs once. "My dad says mum is an angel now. And she can't get back because there are no angels on earth. I'm making a snow angel so she can use it to get back." He looked at the boy like he was daring him to mock him.

"I don't think it works like that." To Kurt's surprise, his voice wasn't mocking, it was gentle and cautious. Soft even.

"It has to work." He replied, swallowing his tears down for the millionth time that day.

The boy studied his face for a while, looking like he was torn between telling the truth and letting him be happy, just for a while, even if that was dangerous. That two minutes felt like an eternity to Kurt but he must have decided to do the latter because he laid down next to him and moved his arms and legs twice. "I'm Blaine." He held his hand out to Kurt with a cautious smile.

He let himself smile for the first time since yesterday, and took the hand he offered. "Kurt."

"Hello, Kurt." His smile grew wider and he looked up at the grey clouds, so big that the sky seemed like it was made of them. "I'm going to help you smile again."

And he did.

Maybe in long years of suffering and crying and losing hope. And he never could get his mother back by making snow angels –which had become a tradition after that day, the two of them laying down on the cold winter snow and making snow angels every year on her mother's anniversary- but he made him smile again.

He made him happy, and that was the biggest dream of everyone.


End file.
